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Archive for April, 2005

PESACH

Tuesday, April 26th, 2005

IMG_2281

Originally uploaded by Daniel.
The curly haired pair showing off their
whirlwind-matzah-finger-crunch
technique as they await their taxi…
Click the pic for more photies

This weekend was Pesach. Thats right, a time to remember the Jewish exodus from Egypt. a time to remember the pain and suffering of the slaves as they were mistreated by their taskmasters. a time to remember the awesome might of the lord as he smoted the eqyptians with 10 plagues. (which actually turned out to be 250 plagues by the end of the service…). It is also a time where you HAVE to drink minimum 4 glasses of wine!

The evening turned out extremely well! There were 6 of the jewish branch of humanity, and 6 guests from other (but just as important) branches. We all made food with the Seder meal in mind (ie: we made SOOOOO much food that we had to come by the following day to finish it all!) David (an australian madman that is a hauntingly similar bigger version of me) and I went to the Venice Ghetto to collect ourselves some Matzah and manischewitz from the Chabad. It was good fun and they threw in some Matzah meal mix as a bonus! For the meal itself, I aided David and his girlfriend Louisa crunch almonds for the mandatory macaroons. And on the Saturday itself, we went over to our friend Bethany’s place to roast us a CHICKEN (or two).

A few words about this chicken: Imagine a time before time was time… er… In other words before people like Einstein had anything to do with it. In those days there were mystical creatures like Dodo’s, Dinosaurs and fertility goddesses. Well I believe the chicken we found at one of the local butchers was from that time frame. It was MONSTROUS. Truly 3.5 times the size of a typical chicken found at the grocery store. Anyway, thats the one we chose. It was a biblical experience.

Back to pesach: We had a good time. The Haggadah that I purchased in the Ghetto had VERY interesting translation (which was rather difficult to understand/read in english) But afforded us more opportunities to smile in wonderment – which is another of those required experiences for a good religious holiday. Bethany took very good care of the seder plate. We had the typical goodies as well as some additional more personalized items. Each of us had to make an offering. I threw in a bunch of origami frogs in reverence of the coolest of the plagues. mmmmm Food. Chicken soup with Matzah balls; Salads; CHICKEN; Fish… Vladimir made fish. He was obviously put on this earth to remind people of the spritual power found in the oceans. (and to be a general all round fanatastic guy); Chocolate mouse; Asparagus; yummy leaks; oi. SO MUCH. So yeah. A good time.

Its good to have such a nice bunch of people around me!

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bike_profile

Friday, April 15th, 2005

bike_profile

Originally uploaded by danielhirschmann.

So this is my bike… er… WAS my bike. I was about to install a nifty little LED light to the front of her when all of a sudden I was faced with a void of no-bikedness… SO: I couldn’t install my beautiful led light flicker thing – AND I couldn’t ride to Capoeira… I was so sad. So very VERY sad. But realized that someone out there obviously needed my bike more than me. (May their toe nails fall off… AND stay off! And then little mosquitoe’s should bite em on their nailless toes!!! YESSSS! Oops… was that live? Did people read this? Ah well!)

On a waaaaaay lighter note: Annabelle is gonna arrive in Treviso TOMORROW! Bienvenuto and all that. Its going to be great to have the trio back together again (which would include marky mark and myself. WOO WOOO.

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budget = ALMOST complete!

Thursday, April 14th, 2005

Yesterday was our final mission into the wonderful world of spending fabricas ‘physical computing department budget’. And what a wonderful day it was! We spend EURO 40.00 on boxes for all the fantastic components and hardware that we’d bought over the last few weeks. The funnest day was on Tuesday. We spent EURO 450.00 on powertools! (and tools that require elbow greece instead of voltage!) It was so cooool. Spending money on drills and jigsaws and a table vice, and drill bits and screw drivers and rasps and files and wood and nails and screws and and and glue and duct tape (my sweet sweet duct tape) etc. It a day of macho tool weilding. (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA… oi)

One of the memorable moments was in my favorite store: “Botter”. They sell all the pro hardware. (You know, the kind of drills you just don’t see in the laymen hardware stores) Its obviously a family run business… The first time we went there, the man at the counter introduced us to his english speaking figlio (son), Francesco. He was fantastic to chat to. This time though, he wasn’t in! So we were forced to chat to another son who had VERY little english. He was allowing us behind the counter and showing us all the goodies that people are OBVIOUSLY not intended to see (like BOXES and TOOLS!). The result? MOMMA came out of the office and decided to start dealing with us directly. If you thought the son couldn’t speak english – well then the mother was a mute (with a metaphorical baseball bat). It took us about 10 minutes to totally eradicate the momentum we’d achieved with the son – and a further 30 minutes to generate the last few items on the list.

When it was all over though, she gave us the satisfied smile of a momma who just single handedly protected her family from the evils of foreign influence. (and who pay in EURO CASH).

Good times shopping in Italia… gooooood times.

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Venezia

Thursday, April 7th, 2005

IMG_2040

Originally uploaded by danielhirschmann.

Its a Sunday in italia. And Mark, his mom Carol and I decided to head into venice – cause its there! (And Carol had promised her mom that she wouldn’t return to North America without some round large marble sized murano glass beads.) And so the shopping began!

It was a beautiful day in Venice. But a Sunday is “Hey! Lets ALL go to Venice together with best friends and their distant cousins” day. So it was PACKED. (Its not even Summer yet. It was in fact fairly crisp and therefore I assume that the majority of the travellers were of italian origin.) This is also the weekend of the death of the pope. So we had assumed all the traffic would be in the opposite direction… Ahh well. I guess it could have been WAY more packed.

Anyway – a few missions that were achieved:
1) I bought a Haggadah from the jewish ghetto. It is a damaged book – but that made it waaaay more affordable :-)
2) Carol bought a number of beads for her mom.
3) We had coffee in St. Marco square … ON yellow chairs… AND were not effected by the billions of obese pigeons … AND used the Cafe’s toilet without too much difficulty!
4) Saw the flags at half-mast due to his holiness’ passing.
5) I FINALLY ATE ITALIAN GELATO! It was good… but perhaps not as good as I was hoping for.
6) I left a little of my soul in Venice… the cold cut it out of me. (And a beautiful girl in a shop.)

It was fun. Click the picture to browse more.

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Padova – Buon Pasqua!

Friday, April 1st, 2005

21-GiottoScravigniChappel

Originally uploaded by danielhirschmann.

So monday … Known to us all as Easter monday (or pasqua lunedi in italian) – was the perfect day to visit beautiful Padova. Its the second oldest university town in italy if I remember correctly… Absolutely gorgeous. Mark and I took a train into town, and found the main street absolutely empty! But having had a similar experience last sunday in Belluno, we realised it was obviously nappy nap time for the Padovians.

There is so much history engraved into every rock in this place. You’re walking around and there are exquisite sculptures from the first century AD… It highlights the difference between a place like this and South Africa // New York. They each have their own culural charm and histories, but nothing like the everydayness of the history in italy (or most of europe I imagine!)

So highlights of this particular little trip included an hour plus nap in a fairly large park surrounded by Roman statues; A little trip to the local Padovian museum; And of course a trip to the magnificent Scrovegni Chappel. It was fan-bloody-tastic! Ghitto rocks. And of course when a town chooses to restore an exceedingly important aspect of its cultural history for the sake of preservation (and money making) its rather marvellous! Gorgeous stuff.

A fantastic trip. Looking forward to returning there at some point.

Click the pic to see the pics from our little excursion.

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